Colonel Pat Lang's Outpost - "A Committee of Correspondence"

Posts from June 2006

30 June 2006

The noise generated in the United States over the issue of “amnesty” for insurgent fighters in Iraq who may have killed or wounded American soldiers makes it sound as though a lot of us are not willing to give peace a chance.

Iraq’s Prime Minister, al-Maliki has constructed an offer to the non-Jihadi insurgent groups which proposes their re-integration into Iraqi society. They have responded with a counter-offer that revolves around a two year time table for the withdrawal of coalition forces from Iraq. In return for that they offer a complete cease fire on the part of all guerrilla forces under their control. In my opinion an agreement like that would isolate the Jihadis and permit their extermination by coalition and Iraqi forces, some of which might be found among the parties on both sides of this dialog .

Some people in the United States find this possibility for peace to be unacceptable because the insurgents whom al-Maliki is negotiating with have been fighting American soldiers. The reasoning is that those insurgents are criminals and perhaps murderers and that they must receive criminal justice for their crimes.

This is a truly stupid attitude. It is true that the propaganda that has supported the war effort had described the insurgents as uniformly Jihadist and terrorist. The same propaganda has described them as criminals. This may have been useful in shaping public opinion in the United States over the last three years, but it is no longer useful. The coalition now confronts the need to assist the al-Maliki government in bringing together enough of the disparate factions in Iraq to build itself a support base which will enforce and maintain a peace that will justify the sacrifices soldiers have made in the war.

The United States has rarely, if ever, taken the position that mere service in war against itself constituted criminal behavior. In a few instances after World War II individuals were held accountable and punished for their personal culpability in “crimes against humanity,” “planning and waging aggressive war,” etc., but this sanction was not applied to the men who served in the ranks. Indeed, very senior officers were held blameless for their participation in the struggle.

It is axiomatic that peace must be made with enemies, not friends. If Iraqi insurgents who have fought and perhaps killed Iraqi and coalition soldiers are excluded from the possibility of reconciliation and amnesty, then who will be left to make peace with? The answer is simple. No one. That would mean that the war will go on and on and on. In that case it would prove impossible to withdraw coalition forces for a long time.

It should be obvious that the al-Maliki government would not have made this offer of amnesty and “national reconciliation” if it believed that it will be able to suppress the insurgencies by force of arms.

It has been my good fortune to finally be reading The Spirit of the Laws by Montesquieu. (It was a book I was to have read in college, but I was evasive and lazy, and dishonest, and am finally realizing the degree to which I picked my own pocket.

Of course when you mention M’s book, every student of U.S. history goes into convulsions of rapture over Chapter 11, used as a model by the Founding Fathers, where M merely restates, amplifies and makes clearer the doctrine of the Roman historian Polybius pertaining to the separation of powers. But ignore Chapter 11 for the moment. For me, it is the early part of M’s book that struck me most hard because I felt it to be the most relevant to explaining the stupidities of our policies not only in Iraq, but our past policies in Vietnam or Iran, for example.

Let me explain.

On page 8 of his work, Montesquieu makes clear that every human society is unique, individual, and unrepeatable, and that it is therefore not to be understood in any vague or colorless or generalized terms. Mont. says that laws of countries “should be adopted to the people by which they were created, and that it should be a great coincidence that the laws of one nation suit another….(The laws) should be fitted to the physical conditions (Mont.’s italics) of the country, to its climate, whether cold, hot or temperate; to the nature of its soil, to its nature and extent and the way of life of its people whether it is agricultural, pastoral or that of hunters; they ought to be adapted to the degree of liberty which the constitution can bear, to the religion of the inhabitants, to their disposition, their wealth, their numbers, their commerce, and to their habits and manners.”

He then says that the laws have to be studied as to the source of their origins, the design of the lawgiver, and the (social or political) order in which the laws were meant to operate.

Why this fascinated me derives from my entirely unvalidated guess that the members of the Bush administration are, perhaps unconsciously, big, obtuse, sincere disciples of The Enlightenment of the 18th Century whose major thinkers kept trying to banish or at least subjugate and control the quirks, discrepancies, the eccentricities, the anomalies, the indigestible differences to be observed in the behavior of human beings by discovering general laws that would cover any and all instances, variations, and occasions. This is the typical “one size should fit all,” approach to human experience that has so marred our own national life in the United States. We in America think it a triumph when human beings begin to think in unison. Montesquieu thought it a disaster. That’s a starting point.

In any case, Mont. makes clear that he believes that no society became what it finds itself being by adopting in the beginning by adapting a deliberate or abstract plan of some sort. A society evolves, he felt. In other words, a society becomes what it does because of the very individual variants of belief and behavior on the part of its members combined with the way those beliefs and actions have modified the human enviroment and have been modified by the environment in turn. A society doesn’t develop from a blue print -- it evolves and not in any prescribed or definite direction or for any specific end. It evolves in one way in this area of the world, and evolves quite differently in another. And Mont. says that because the two societies evolve differently does not mean the one is right and the other wrong, or that one is superior and the other inferior but simply that they are different and must be looked at as being different and that those differences are not only legitimate but natural and must be understood by means of study and hard work. Which means of course, the laying aside of bias and preconception. In other words, there are differences in the mental, moral and physical characteristics at work in the forming of a society. It is the sum of those that result in different institutions, outlooks, religions and other forms of collective belief, myths, and peculiarities of action.

You are saying to yourselves by now, please come back to earth.

I will. My point is that we usually know nothing or next to nothing of the cultures we insist on invading, saving, or intervening in for the sake of securing our own welfare or our own freedom from fear. Vietnam is a good example. When we got involved in saving it from communism, etc, Vietnam was a Buddhist country. The Buddhist monks there were a powerful if not always obvious political and social influence who enjoyed widespread popular support. So what did we, the United States, do? We go in there the 1950s and support what? Buddhists? No. We supported a Catholic government, Diem’s. Now had we bothered, we might have found out that the Catholics were viewed generally by the very Vietnamese population whose support we were courting as being corrupt collaborators with the detested French, that vile bully of a colonial power. By supporting Diem, who was mad with a desire to hang on to power at all costs and whose politics were entirely those of self (like Milosevic’s), we might have thought differently and more subtly and more accurately. In other words, we would have perceived our situation more rightly and acted more wisely.

In fact, had we really known Communism as thoroughly as we pretended to, and had we really known Russian history thoroughly and understood how much Stalin was essentially not an ideologue, but an old Russian imperialist after the manner of Peter the Great, we might have perceived that national, not ideological animosities drove a wedge between Peking and Moscow and that, at the time, China feared Stalin more than the United States. In fact, grasping the nature of those national and cultural rivalries would have destroyed the fictional evil communist monolith U.S. policymakers kept claiming was attempting to devour all of Asia. Remember that the Russians had stolen thousands of miles of land from China back in the 1800s (I think) and resentment of that theft would flower into a bloody border war in 1969.

Also think of our policy-makers flaccidly accepting the myth of Vietnam as a cat’s paw of China. The fact was that those two countries hated each other the way the Israelis and Palestinians hate each other or the Serbs and Croatians detested each other. China had occupied Vietnam on and off for centuries and the mutual animosity of Hanoi and Peking stretched back for hundreds of years. Yes, China supplied weapons to the North Vietnamese, of course, just as Wellington supported the guerrillas in Spain or we the mujahideen in Afghanistan.

I am ending.

If Pat gives me permission I would, however, like to go on, and again talk about differences of countries, their contrasting outlooks, social and economic organizations, and political structures that seem to me to apply to our own predicaments today. Knowing how highly Pat thinks of his readers, I hope this will arouse interest and be discussed among you. I am offering this in good will.

"An Israeli military official said a total of 64 Hamas officials were arrested in the early morning roundup. Of those, Palestinian officials said seven are ministers in Hamas' 23-member Cabinet and 20 others are lawmakers in the 72-seat parliament." Gutkin in Yahoo News

If we really believe that Israel/Olmert has moved to destroy the elected Palestinian government and re-occupy Gaza over one captured soldier, then we are truly gullible.

Hamas "sin" here is that it would not accept the very concept of a permanent treaty of peace with Israel. As I keep saying, that course of action is not really a possibility for them.

I quote below in whole my post of 20 March, 2006 on this subject.

Pat Lang

----------------------------------------------

"Peace? What Peace?

Ambassador Dennis Ross, the architect of Camp David Two and the chief diplomat of the United States in the Peace Process, pronounced himself the other day to be of the opinion that if the new Hamas government of the PA does not not change itself to accept Israel's existence, then it will have to be destroyed.

There is a certain logic in this. Ross made an effort to make peace between Israel and the Palestinians and it came to less than naught. He is understandably distraught at the failure of his hopes. As a follow up to that failure he became an executive of an organization that seeks to advance the interests of Jewish people in what I think of as the Holy Land. He said that the reason he did so was that he is Jewish.

Now, the PA will form a government drawn in its membership from its own leadership, none of whom have accepted Israel's existence. Nor are they likely to do so in the future. The Hamasniks justify their actions to themselves and everyone else on the basis of their identity as Muslims.

To put the issue simply, it is war "to the knife" between these two peoples.

"After other Palestinian factions refused to join a coalition, the victorious Islamist group nominated a Cabinet whose senior members have all been jailed, deported and escaped Israeli assassination. Chief among Prime Minister-designate Ismail Haniya’s 24 ministers are Dr Mahmoud al-Zahar, a hardliner, as Foreign Minister, and Said Siyam as Interior Minister. Most others are Hamas, with some pro-Islamist independents and technocrats, one woman and one Christian.

President Mahmoud Abbas is expected to approve them but may try to delay the decision until after the Israeli general election on March 28. However, Shaul Mofaz, Israel’s Defence Minister, said that if President Abbas accepted the line-up he would “officially turn the Palestinian Authority into a terror entity”. Hamas faces a cash crisis, as EU foreign ministers met in Brussels yesterday to consider how to continue providing aid to Palestinians without endorsing what is regarded as a terrorist organisation by the EU and US. " London Times

I will repeat my earlier estimate. After the Israeli election, a campaign to eliminate the Hamas/PA leadership will accelerate and if that does not succeed in eliminating the Hamas government, then Israel will begin to re-occupy the territories.

"These developments offer an opportunity. If the terrorist operation is thwarted through the efforts of Mr. Abbas and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, the way may be opened to a shift by the Palestinian government away from violence. The most likely alternative is a resumption of full-scale war between Israelis and Palestinians and the destruction of the Hamas administration. Yesterday Israel was wisely holding off on military action, but it can't be expected to be patient for long. Arab governments, the United States and the European Union must press hard for the right outcome: If Hamas fails to embrace politics over violence now, it probably won't get another chance." Washpost

This is just more "baloney." Hamas will never, NEVER, NEVER recognize Israel's right to own any of historic Palestine in "fee simple." To do that would be for them to deny their own self image is "true Muslims" and defenders of the land of the Umma.

A truce they might agree to, but that would be unacceptable to the Israelis who are their own kind of absolutist.

Watch for some sort of tricky language which will seek to "stroke" the Americans and the Israelis into the somnolence of self deception.

25 June 2006

"Under the plan, the first reductions would involve two combat brigades that would rotate out of Iraq in September without being replaced. Military officials do not typically characterize reductions by total troop numbers, but rather by brigades. Combat brigades, which generally have about 3,500 troops, do not make up the bulk of the 127,000-member American force in Iraq, and other kinds of units would not be pulled out as quickly.

American officials emphasized that any withdrawals would depend on continued progress, including the development of competent Iraqi security forces, a reduction in Sunni Arab hostility toward the new Iraqi government and the assumption that the insurgency will not expand beyond Iraq's six central provinces. Even so, the projected troop withdrawals in 2007 are more significant than many experts had expected" Gordon

"NEWSWEEK has obtained a draft copy of the national reconciliation plan, and verified its contents with two Iraqi officials involved in the reconciliation process who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the plan's contents. Prime Minister Maliki will present the document to the National Assembly when it convenes on Sunday, and it's expected to be debated over the coming week. Maliki has made reconciliation and control of party militias the main emphasis of his new government. This plan follows a series of secret negotiations over the past two months between seven insurgent groups, President Jalal Talabani and officials of the U.S. embassy. The insurgent groups involved are Sunnis but do not include foreign jihadis like al Qaeda and other terrorist factions who deliberately target civilians; those groups have always denounced any negotiations.

The distinction between insurgents and terrorists is one of the key principles in the document, and is in response to Sunni politicians' demands that the "national resistance" should not be punished for what they see as legitimate self-defense in attacks against a foreign occupying power. Principle No. 19 calls for "Recognizing the legitimacy of the national resistance and differentiating or separating it from terrorism" while "encouraging the national resistance to enroll in the political process and recognizing the necessity of the participation of the national resistance in the national reconciliation dialogue."" Newswek

- There does not seem to be a "zero US troops in country" desired end state in this plan. IMO any long term US combat troops presence will result in the instability of the Iraqi government and continued hostile action against our forces in Iraq.

- Maliki's reconciliation plan would reduce guerrilla activity to that carried on by the international jihadis if it were accepted by the seven resistance groups with whom he has been negotiating, This would isolate the jihadis and a wide variety of Iraqis would then concentrate on eliminating them as a nuisance.

-To obtain the agreement of the seven groups it will be necessary to 1- give the Sunni Arab and secular Shia a larger share of power and wealth than their numbers would justify if it were not necessary to get them to stop fighting. 2- accept the Iraqi notion that fighting our occupation was a legitimate form of national resistance.

- "2" above is clearly an American problem. The Iraqis are already "there." This is going to be difficult for a lot of Americans to accept. They have been taught to think of the "resistance" as criminals. It will be hard to get people to stop thinking of them that way.

- Why is this necessary? Well, folks, you can't make peace with your friends. You have to make peace with the enemy, or at least some enemies.

- How does this post relate to the last one? The last one is what happens if al-Mailki fails.

23 June 2006

"The Republican-controlled Senate yesterday soundly rejected two Democratic proposals to withdraw troops from Iraq, turning back the Democrats' argument that there should be a clear policy change in the war. "Withdrawal is not an option. Surrender is not a solution," said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Tennessee Republican. " WT

""They were just looking for a political opening and I think they really messed up," Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican, said of the Democrats' strategy. "People see that things are moving [in Iraq]. This was a good week for Republicans." Vice President Dick Cheney also criticized the Democrats' efforts, saying in a CNN interview that "absolutely the worst possible thing we could do at this point would be to validate and encourage the terrorists by doing exactly what they want us to do, which is to leave." " WT

""The only ones who would win by us setting a date certain ... is al Qaeda," said Sen. Johnny Isakson, Georgia Republican. "The result of today's debate sends a strong message to our men and women in the Middle East that the country is behind them." "A failed state in Iraq would pose a clear, present and enduring threat," said Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican. "We've just one choice in Iraq and that is to see our mission there through to victory." " WT

Isakson is right. the country is "behind" the troops. Good. If you are going to send people to fight, you should be behind them.

Countries are like individuals in some ways. A man with his "blood up" is going to fight until he is exhausted. We Americans have our "blood up." We are not exhausted. We do not want to lose. We are going to continue to fight until we are exhausted. We are a strong country. Exhaustion will be a long time coming.

We have inserted ourselves into a situation in the Middle East and Central Asia in which we only dimly perceive the outlines. The "locals" have their own axes to grind. Once they are sharp enough they are going to start to use them on each other "with a vengeance." Literally.

Given our current level of emotional "investment" in the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan, I would guess that it will be at least five years before we will have had "enough."

Democrats? Republicans? It won't make the slightest difference who is in power. These wars will go on until we are through with them.

20 June 2006

"The Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella organization of five insurgent groups led by al-Qaida in Iraq, posted an Internet statement Monday claiming it was holding the American soldiers captive and that "we shall give you more details about the incident in the next few days, God willing."

On Tuesday, after Iraqi officials disclosed that the bodies were found, the Shura Council posted another Web statement, saying al-Zarqawi's successor had "slaughtered" the soldiers. The language in the statement, which could not be authenticated, suggested the group was saying the men were beheaded.

The 502nd Infantry Regiment has lost two of its brothers to an enemy who did not know when it would be a good idea to stop. In the coming days it is virtually inevitable that those who aided and abetted the Shura Council in this "operation" will come to understand that some restraint might have been a good idea. Unfortunately, retribution will extend to many who were uninvolved.

19 June 2006

"A noncommissioned officer and two soldiers each have been charged with violating several articles of the Uniform Code of Military Justice including murder, attempted murder, conspiracy, communicating a threat, and obstructing justice," an announcement said.

It added that "on the day the alleged murders occurred, the unit commander ordered an inquiry to determine the circumstances surrounding the deaths of the three detainees."

It said that a criminal investigation began May 17 and was ongoing." Yahoo

Given the fact that an Army officer is the "convening authority" for whatever happens to the US Marines involved at Haditha, it was inevitable that the Army would take a hard look at any ongoing criminal procedures involving its own.

This is going to get worse. Let us not forget that these are our own beloved sons.

18 June 2006

"While the PA and its benefiting classes are fighting a battle to keep the "process" alive, the Israelis have shown every indication that the "process" ended for them a long time ago. For them, the Oslo process was a necessary but historically finite step designed to co-opt the Palestinian leadership, solidify Israel's grip on stolen Palestinian lands, and normalise Israel's diplomatic status in the Arab world as well as globally. As the Israelis have achieved all these goals, the process no longer serves any purpose for them. At the moment, their continuing campaign to bomb and assassinate Palestinian civilians and pro- and anti-"process" politicians in the West Bank and Gaza has shown no sign of abating. As the Oslo process has brought calamity after calamity on the Palestinian people, its only reason for continuing is the survival of the PA classes that are its main and only beneficiaries.

Make no mistake about it, this is what the ongoing battle in the West Bank and Gaza is all about. What lies in the balance is the fate of nine million Palestinians." Massad

17 June 2006

"Brian visits the only other Bedford father who had lost a son in Iraq. On November 15, 2004, 19-year-old Marine Lance Cpl. Travis R. Desiato, who grew up with John Hart, was searching for insurgents in a row of houses in Fallujah. He went through the door at the end of a hallway. Six insurgents opened fire. For the next several hours, fellow Marines fought room to room, sometimes face to face with insurgents, to recover his body and send it home to Bedford.

Travis's father, Joe Desiato, meets with Brian in a small examining room of his pediatric practice. Brian wants to know whether the protective plates of Travis's body armor had shattered when fired upon. One of Travis's plates did shatter, his father says; but given the ferocity of the attack he doesn't believe better body armor could have saved him.

The pediatrician says he respects Brian's efforts to get the troops better armor, but prefers to deal with his own grief by reflecting on the valor of young soldiers willing to die for their country and one another. "I think Brian, in forcing the armor to the vehicles, has saved a number of people's lives," he says. "But it becomes a very delicate tightrope of how to be an activist without making it political and using your son's death as a tool to espouse your views and have anyone listen."" April Witt

As in Dreiser's novel (and the movie) there is something particularly, poignantly American in this article.

Perhaps it is the will to trust displayed by the paratrooper's parents, the will to believe that those who should do "the right thing" will do the right thing.

Perhaps it is the anger which the paratrooper's parents felt against the pacifism of the Unitarian community of Bedford, an anger which transformed itself into a realization of belonging in Bedford after the son's death.

Perhaps it is the unbending resolve of the paratrooper's father to take action against the high and the mighty who have not "done the right thing." His son died of a bullet wound in the neck. Vehicular armor was not the issue but the father took up that fight nonetheless.

Perhaps it is the pediatrician who will not allow his son's sacrifice and that of his comrades to be "appropriated" by the usual assortment of politicals for their advantage.

"..to recover his body.." The willingness of men to do this is a frequent occurrence in war. It always makes me aware of my own inadequacies. Long ago, a lieutenant colonel of my acquaintance made a serious mistake in the middle of a night time fire fight and died as a result one hundred yards outside the gate of the compound inhabited and defended by his command. He was not a popular man. He was not a very smart man. He was not a very good leader.

There were three attacks made across that open space the next day for the sole purpose of recovering his body. These were attacks made by groups of volunteers. Most of the officers had been killed the night before and groups of enlisted men decided that they were going to go out and bring in the "old man's" body. They did so. There were four wounded. If I had been at that end of town, I would have stopped this recovery effort. I do not believe in sacrificing live men for dead ones.

It is a very tricky thing to start assigning blame for what happens in combat. It is less tricky to assign blame for bureaucratic inertia, lobbyists who don't care about much of anything except contracts or a lack of the "vision thing" on the part of leaders who are expected to have vision.

For Christ's sake (literally), why can't a country that can build space stations, make body armor that is light, comprehensive, cooled in some way and impervious to small arms fire?

16 June 2006

"Over the past several months, Brammertz quietly jettisoned many of Mehlis’s conclusions and began entertaining other investigative leads, examining a variety of possible motives and a number of potential perpetrators in recognition of the animosities Hariri had engendered among business competitors, religious extremists – and political enemies.

Brammertz said “the probe was … developing a working hypothesis regarding those who had commissioned the crime,” according to a U.N. statement, which was released after Brammertz briefed the Security Council on June 14. “Given the many different positions occupied by Mr. Hariri, and his wide range of public and private-sector activities, the [U.N.] commission was investigating a number of different motives, including political motivations, personal vendettas, financial circumstances and extremist ideologies, or any combination of those motivations,”" Parry

My immediate reaction on the 14th of February, 2005 was that the Syrian government must have had something to do with this crime. I was on the air with Wolf Blitzer and Judith Yaphe when this story "broke." Both she and I had the same reaction. My reason was simple. I didn't thing this could be "pulled off" in Beirut under virtual Syrian occupation without their foreknowledge.

Now I have doubts. As Brammertz has discovered Rafik Hariri had so many enemies of all kinds and capabilities that there are a nearly infinite set of possibilities as to who "got" him."

On Saturday, a group of parliament members paid a surprise visit to a detention facility run by the Interior Ministry in Baqubah, north of Baghdad. "We have found terrible violations of the law," said Muhammed al-Dayni, a Sunni parliament member who said as many as 120 detainees were packed into a 35-by-20-foot cell. "They told us that they've been raped," Dayni said. "Their families were called in and tortured to force the detainees to testify against other people."

"The detention facilities of the ministries of Defense and Interior are places for the most brutal human rights abuse," he added.

Despite broad U.S. efforts to encourage the Iraqi government to improve conditions in prisons, the problem of militia control could prove particularly intractable. Shiite militias such as the Badr Organization and the Mahdi Army, loyal to cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, are backed by dozens of members of parliament whose political parties run the armed groups. Washpost

"You can't even talk to the militias, because they are the government," Yei said. "They have ministers on their side."

Yes. It is a Dukakis moment. Armored vests and helmets look mighty fine on people not used to them. I hope they were sitting on something real solid, The "stuff" that comes up through the floor is usually the worst in it ability to hit you in places where you don't want to be hit.

I was sitting across from a soldier in a Huey once and a small arms round came through the floor, went right through his foot and then out through the top of the helicopter. Luckily for us all nothing in the helicopter was seriously damaged. His foot was thoroughly spoiled.

They are saying that the president was not wearing this kind of gear on the helicopters? Unless he is a fool, that would not be true.

13 June 2006

Perhaps the most important element of the tracking down and killing of terrorist mastermind Abu Musah al-Zarqawi rests on the fact that the key intelligence came from an Iraqi source, according to serving U.S. intelligence officials.

The informant Ziyad Halaf al-Karbouli, also known as Abu Hufeiza, was captured last month by a Jordanian unit called the “Riders of Justice,” part of Jordan’s 71st Commando Brigade, in a operation personally overseen by King Abdullah, according to U.S. intelligence sources.

Karbouli was responsible for the abduction and murder last September of Khaled Da Siko, a Palestinian, who was an important Jordanian undercover agent tasked with penetrating Zarqawi’s group. Da Siko was killed by Karbouli on the orders of Zarqawi after being kidnapped last September from Ruthba in western Iraq, U.S. officials said.

The Jordanian ploy to snare Zarqawi involved offering Zarqawi a base in Jordan for his operations that included millions of dollars in financial support, U.S. officials said.

Karbouli fell for the bait, but only after Jordanian intelligence made use of growing disillusionment on the part of two of Zarqawi’s own tribesmen, who met in December with Jordanian intelligence officials. The tribesman, from the Bani Hassan tribe, were disgusted by Zarqawi’s vicious attacks on hotels in Jordan, according to Middle East analyst Adel Darwish, (a friend of mine) and confirmed by U.S. intelligence officials.

The tribal members were told that the old tribal code of honor that forbids informing on another member was no longer valid after Zarqawi’s heartless actions. Jordanian intelligence then discovered that other tribal leaders were tired of Zarqawi’s bloodthirstiness and weary of being pressured for information by Jordanian spooks.

In the meantime, Jordanian intelligence, which has U.S. military advisors, had cast a very wide net, working through what former East German Stasi chief Marcus Wolfe called “chains of contacts.”

A former U.S. operative said that Jordanian intelligence began extensive police work in an attempt to identify, entrap, compromise and persuade people who knew Zarqawi or friends of his to cooperate in tracking the master. A number of people were contacted and taken to the Ministry of Interior’s special prison building in downtown Amman which the locals call “Government Free Hotel” or “The Fingernail Factory” for what were termed “earnest, comprehensive discussions of common interest,” in the words of a former U.S. official.

Lt. Gen. Tahsin Sherdom, until recently Jordan’s Director of Public Safety and part of the “Circassian Mafia” which prevails in the Jordanian military and security services, had a direct interest in these interrogations, former U.S. officials said.

The Iraqi collaborators were encouraged by Amman to reach out to likeminded companions, and one of these fingered al-Karbouli, who was then captured and questioned. It was then that Karbouli fingered Sheikh Abd al-Rahman, the spiritual advisor of Zarqawi, and U.S. Special Forces, who had been working with the Jordanians, began their surveillance, which included the assignment of two Predators drones plus intercepts of al-Rahman’s satellite phone.

It was by means of informants and technical surveillance that the United States trailed al-Rahman to his meeting with Zarqawi. The air strike on the safe house was targeted by laser beams directed on the site by U.S. Special Forces.

The big question now for U.S. and Jordanian intelligence operatives is whether the tribesmen and Karbouli will be followed by other Sunni and Iraqi defectors from the insurgency. If that happens, Zarqawi’s death could actually prove to be a key turning point, as so many, for the wrong reasons, have said that it is.

11 June 2006

"A sergeant who led a squad of Marines during the incident in Haditha, Iraq, that left as many as 24 civilians dead said his unit did not intentionally target any civilians, followed military rules of engagement and never tried to cover up the shootings, his attorney said.

Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, 26, told his attorney that several civilians were killed Nov. 19 when his squad went after insurgents who were firing at them from inside a house. The Marine said there was no vengeful massacre, but he described a house-to-house hunt that went tragically awry in the middle of a chaotic battlefield." Josh White

This, evidently, is the on the scene commander at the time of the shootings in Haditha. Some people will find it hard to believe that a Staff Sergeant was in command but it is quite possible.

What you see here is undoubtedly a preview of what his defense will be if he is ever tried for murder or other possible offenses under UCMJ.

It is his only workable defense, and that is that the Iraqi witnesses are lying and that the civilians were killed unintentionally in the course of a firefight in the town.

How that would "play" would depend on whether or not the other Americans all back up his story and there is no forensic or other material evidence to substantiate the crimes that he might be accused of.

I don't think that would work for him. There are too many other knowledgeable people, photographs, etc.

08 June 2006

""a severe blow to al-Qaida and it is a significant victory in the war on terror." (GW Bush)

But he cautioned: "We have tough days ahead of us in Iraq that will require the continuing patience of the American people."

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said al-Zarqawi's death "will not mean the end of all violence in that country."

He added that it was apt that al-Zarqawi — who had tried to thwart Iraqi elections and formation of a new government — died on the day the new government in Baghdad finalized its cabinet.

Around the time news reports announced al-Zarqawi's death, two bombs hit a market and a police patrol in Baghdad, killing at least 19 people and wounding more than 40. Police differed on whether the bombs struck shortly before or after the 10:30 a.m. news. Later, a parked car bomb exploded in north Baghdad, killing six people and wounding 15.

Al-Qaida in Iraq vowed to continue its "holy war," according to a statement posted on a Web site.

"We want to give you the joyous news of the martyrdom of the mujahed sheik Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

"The death of our leaders is life for us. It will only increase our persistence in continuing holy war so that the word of God will be supreme." Yahoo

Zarqawi was a bad and deluded man. He is dead. Good. Is it important? Not very much.

We Americans and our Israeli friends are obsessed with our own conception of what the mentality of people different from us ought to be. We can not deal with the reality of completely different and adversarial world views and mind sets. We account for systematic hostility toward adoption of our ways by attributing this "backwardness" to "bogey men" who from sheer evilness and perversity lead their fellows astray. Having done this, we then build them up in our minds and media as "supermen" whose elimination will end resistance to our "program" of "modernity."

Zarqawi was largely the creation of the collective American mind. In fact, he was the leader of less than 10% of the Iraqi insurgents. His people like to blow themselves up on "their way home." Will his pious madmen stop doing that now? We will see. Present thinking is that AQ in Iraq is now overwhelmingly Iraqi in its personnel.

The other 90% of the people in the Iraq insurgent groups are whatever they have always been.

And then there is the "question" of the ongoing sectarian and ethnic civil war in the country. This says nothing to that.

No. The big story today was the approval of Defense and Interior ministers. Will they prove to be "up to" the task of creating the forces that will hold the country together?

07 June 2006

"A burial site in eastern Lebanon originally believed to be a mass grave for victims of Syria's military presence is actually a graveyard dating to the 17th century, a Lebanese prosecutor said in a statement published Wednesday.

Syria ended its nearly three-decade military presence in Lebanon last year. The remains of at least 28 people discovered in December in the Bekaa Valley town of Anjar ranged from 50 to 350 years old, Prosecutor General Saeed Mirza said.

"The remains found ... are part of an ordinary cemetery used by Muslims who lived in the village to bury their dead," said the statement by Mirza published by local newspapers Wednesday.

None of the remains were dated after the year 1950, the statement said, adding, "there is no evidence that any crime was committed."

Turkish soldiers, posted to the area when it was part of the Ottoman Empire, were among those buried. Last year's discovery of the site caused an uproar as anti-Syrian political forces pointed the finger at Syria's military which pulled out in April 2005 amid domestic and international pressure following the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri." Yahoo

"A bold proposal comes from my friend in Iraq, who knows the security situation there intimately. He argues that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki should move his government's 27 ministries, which increasingly are operating in the Green Zone, out into the city. The Iraqi army would protect each outpost of the government, aided by U.S. teams. "The population needs to see there is a government that has the courage to reclaim the city, one district at a time."

My friend likens the current frantic pace in the Green Zone to people in socks trying to run on a slick linoleum floor. "There is a lot of activity, but very little forward motion," he writes. "Hope is not a strategic plan, and the status quo is unacceptable."" Ignatius

Well, that is not going to happen. Al-Maliki knows that if he did what Ignatius suggests (presumably in a Koolaid induced ecstatic state), then he and his playmates would be the "headless horsemen" of Baghdad in short order.

Tom Friedman (Mr. Flatearth) and David Ignatius appear to be persistent, if somewhat uncommitted, Koolaid tipplers.

They seem to be disappointed that the Utopian dream of the neocons has come to so little and is in fact is wrecking the societies to which it has been applied for "actualization." The stubbornness of the Muslims in refusing the gift of "progress" is evidently unaccountable in the context of the "obvious" benefits offered by globalization and inclusion in the "World Culture." These noted journalists are apparently downcast by the "mugging" that real diversity is inflicting on their view of how things "ought to be."

This understandable depression is, at times, relieved for them by trips to the Koolaid vat in Iraq or in the bosom of the "true believers." These "treatments" can be charted in the ups and downs in levels of optimism in their writing.

"The continuation of Washington's current approach in Somalia would ensure that U.S. interests and those of other countries in the region remain dangerously vulnerable to terrorist attacks from this collapsed state. Continued fighting between Islamist elements and the U.S.-backed warlord alliance will breed resentment, attract recruits to the extremist cause and provide a training ground for new militants. The United States can no longer afford not to engage more deeply and directly in state reconstruction efforts in Somalia. It is in our national security interest to do so." Prendergast

At the time that we intervened in Somalia for humanitarian reasons the American ambassador to Kenya wrote an op/ed piece in which he predicted that no good would come of intruding ourselves into the internal wars of a place as wild and fractious as Somalia. He was right. What we did, and evidently continue to so was to disrupt whatever fragile bonds there were that held the Somali state together. As Somalia disintegrated under the pressure of our aspirations for it, the component parts, focused on the US as the intruder and alienator. What followed is well known.

We did much the same thing in Iraq, but by March, 2003 it had become clearer that for the Jacobin/neocon crowd chaos leading to revolutionary social change and westernization would suffice as a substitute for a smooth and peaceful transition to the same desired "end state."

We left Somalia in the aftermath of the Battle of Mogadishu. We left it to disintegrate further, except that it seems that the "long warriors" have continued to meddle there. And what a splendid outcome they have now brought into being. An Islamist militia has conquered the capital and may do well in the rest of the "country."

In response, the United States is toying with the idea of "dealing with" the Islamists there. That would be logical. Remember, our foreign policy crew has been playing "footsy" with "moderate" Islamists in Egypt for years now.

How about this idea? We adopt a policy of just leaving the Somalis to work out their own problems. How about that, Mr. Prendergast?

06 June 2006

New York, N.Y. – Vanity Fair writer Craig Unger interviews nine former intelligence and military officials who have served in the C.I.A., the State Department, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Pentagon, all of whom say, on the record, that they believe the Niger documents were part of a campaign to deliberately mislead the American public. Some of the officials refer to the Niger documents as “a disinformation campaign,” “black propaganda,” or “a classic psy-ops campaign.”

Unger reports that the U.S. may have gone to war with Iraq not because of intelligence failures but because of an extraordinary intelligence success, specifically an effective campaign of disinformation which led the White House, the Pentagon, Britain’s M.I.6 intelligence service, and thousands of outlets in the American media to promote the falsehood that Saddam Hussein's nuclear-weapons program posed a grave risk to the United States.

"To me, there is no benign interpretation of this," Melvin Goodman, a former C.I.A. and State Department analyst, tells Unger. "At the highest level it was known the documents were forgeries. [Then deputy national security adviser] Stephen Hadley knew it. [Then national security adviser] Condi Rice knew it. Everyone at the highest level knew it." (Hadley and Rice declined to comment.)

Unger talks with Milt Bearden, a 30-year C.I.A. veteran, who tells him the intelligence gathering with regard to the Niger claim “wasn't an accident. This wasn't 15 monkeys in a room with typewriters.”

Unger cites at least 14 instances prior to the 2003 State of the Union address in which analysts at the C.I.A., the State Department, or other government agencies who had examined the Niger documents or reports about them raised serious doubts about their legitimacy—only to be rebuffed by Bush-administration officials who wanted to use the material.

“They were just relentless,” Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, tells Unger. “You would take it out and they would stick it back in. That was their favorite bureaucratic technique—ruthless relentlessness.”

Unger talks with former C.I.A. officer Philip Giraldi about the meeting between SISMI head Nicolò Pollari and Hadley. “It is completely out of protocol for the head of a foreign intelligence service to circumvent the C.I.A.,” Giraldi tells Unger. “It is uniquely unusual. In spite of lots of people having seen these documents, and having said they were not right, they went around them.” (Hadley has confirmed that he met Pollari, but declines to say what was discussed. He claims it was a courtesy call and that he has no recollection of any discussion of natural uranium or any documents being passed.)

Patrick Lang, who served as defense intelligence officer for the Middle East, South Asia and terrorism in the Defense Intelligence Agency, and later as Director of HUMINT (Human intelligence) for the D.I.A., tells Unger: "There's no doubt in my mind that the neocons had their eye on Iraq. This is something they intended to do, and they would have communicated that to SISMI or anybody else to get the help they wanted.”

Lang also tells Unger that SISMI would have been keenly aware that the hard-line neoconservatives were finally coming into power. He says that SISMI would also have wanted to ingratiate itself with the incoming administration. “These foreign intelligence agencies are so dependent on us that the urge to acquire I.O.U.’s is a powerful incentive by itself,” he says.

The July issue of Vanity Fair hits newsstands in New York and Los Angeles on June 7 and nationally June 13.

“"Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq,” the quarterly report to Congress issued by the Department of Defense, is supposed to be a key document to achieve this goal. Like the State Department weekly status report on Iraq, however, it is deeply flawed. It does more than simply spin the situation to provide false assurances. It makes basic analytical and statistical mistakes, fails to define key terms, provides undefined and unverifiable survey information, and deals with key issues by omission. " Anthony H. Cordesman

Cordesman is a very competent and unrelenting authority on questions like this. His point here is that we (the US government) are still "faking it" and brewing up vast cauldrons of "Koolaid" for dispensation to one and all.

The Jack Nicholson marine colonel character in "A Few Good Men" says on the witness stand that the prosecutor should not ask for truth because he would not be able to "handle the truth." Apparently we, as a people, are unable to deal with the truth. It seem that the government knows that, and so it treats us as they would mushrooms under cultivation. They keep us in the dark and feed us horseshit.

"But criticism rolls off Assad's back, and it has not been accompanied by measures compelling Syria to change its behavior. Whether Washington has been unwilling or unable to extract a real price from Syria, the effect is the same: Damascus believes it has dodged the bullet. The regime of Bashar Assad appears more confident than at any time since 2003." Schenker in the Weekly Standard

There is something terribly ironic in Schenker's authorship of this piece. Look at his bio.

Take a look at the SST posts on Syria on 22 and 23 October, 2005. It was altogether predictable that Syria would call the bluff of the United States over the many supposed "crises" in our relations. They did not believe last year and they do not believe now that the United States is going to do anything "serious" to them.

"Serious" in this case means the overthrow of the regime in Damascus. Short of that they follow the rule of the old childrens' rhyme, "Sticks and Stones Can Break My Bones, But Words Will Never Hurt Me."

They are not impressed. They saw clearly last year that we were stuck on the flypaper of Iraq. They see now that our policy with regard to Israel/Palestine is a morass. They also see that we are being "gamed" and mocked by the oh so clever Iranians. They are not impressed.

04 June 2006

That is Field Marshal Hindenburg seated and Colonel General Erich Ludendorff standing. These two gents are generally thought of as Germany's most able command team in WW I. They are credited with the great German victory against Russia at Tannenberg in East Prussia in 1914. They went on to be bosses of the German War effort at the end of the war.

The First World War ended in late 1918 because the German Army could no longer sustain the burden of combat against; the French, the British, and the Americans in the context of the massive introduction of tanks. Tanks had been tried out in the previous year and had been found to be the "magic" ingredient which could (in spite of their "teething" problems) restore mobility to battlefields which had been "frozen" into defensive patterns by machine guns, barbed wire and breech loading field artillery. Faced with all that, the German soldier finally had had "enough" and beginning in August just "folded up" and began moving away en masse, towards the east, towards home and away from the Allies. After years of sitting in muddy trench systems waiting to be slaughtered, Allied soldiers suddenly found themselves to be advancing 10, 20, 30 miles a day through unspoiled countryside and villages. Germany surrendered. Ludendorff suggested the surrender believing that the alternative was complete destruction of the Fatherland. He was right.

Nevertheless, in the 20 year interregnum between the World Wars, Ludendorff was one of the principal proponents of the "Stab in the Back" school of revisionist history. According to his "second thoughts" about what had happened, the German Army had never been defeated in the field. No. No. It had been the defeatism of the Liberals, Socialists and Communists who had corrupted the will of the German people, caused mutinies in the fleet and sapped the German soldier's fighting spirit and morale until the undefeated army had been forced to accept an unnecessary armistice on 11 November. This theory of history proved to be a powerful source of propaganda for the armies of disappointed, bitter and angry Germans who wanted some way to explain how their many, many sacrifices had come to naught. The Freikorps, and ultimately the National Socialists (Nazis) were the beneficiaries of this myth.

If you listen carefully to the Sunday Newsies and read a number of the more mentally constipated blogs, it is possible to see the approach of another such myth.

02 June 2006

"At the very heart of U.S. Middle East policy, from the war in Iraq to pressure for regime change in Iran and Syria to the spread of free-market democracy in the region, sits the 39-year-old daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney. Elizabeth “Liz” Cheney, appointed to her post in February 2005, has a tongue-twisting title: principal deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs and coordinator for broader Middle East and North Africa initiatives. By all accounts, it is an enormously powerful post, and one for which she is uniquely unqualified. " American Prospect.

One had thought that the "Day of the Neocons" (with subtitles) had left the theaters and was only available on the "History Channel," but apparently the phenomenon lives on (in its Cheneyesque variant) at the Department of State. An unhappy retired ambassador sent me Dreyfuss' article in "American Prospect" about the "eminence blonde" now in place in Foggy Bottom pursuing dreams of world-wide democratic (westernization) reform starting in the Middle East. She apparently is ably assisted in this by the Wurmsers, Hannah et al from without the building. Various vacuous Levantine (and other) aspirants to the role of "reformer" in chief in "bilad al- ____" (the homeland) gather at her feet hoping for the magic moment in which Dad will bless them and they can launch forth (backed by US money) to become a more successful Chalabi.

Sulla provides this list of the people who were on the deck of cards and who are still at large. When this leadership and the money it still possesses is "married" to the hundreds and hundreds of former Iraqi army officers and their men who are available for employment by the insurgents then it is no wonder that the more or less nationalist leadership of the militarily effective part of the insurgencies prospers.

Added to this there are local Islamist insurgents, foreign jihadis, tribals and villagers opposed to us for reason satisfactory to them. Is it any wonder that attacks are ever increasing in complexity, sophistication and the numbers of fighters involved in particular operations?